Trusted Resources For Vetting Non-Toxic Products

How often have you stood in the store, trying to make a conscientious choice about the product you’re about to buy but feeling baffled by the unintelligible ingredient label or competing advertising claims? Being confident about purchasing non-toxic options can feel overwhelming. But it doesn’t have to be!

Here are our favorite resources for vetting household products. They research and rate the nitty-gritty so we don’t have to, and we rely on them regularly for nearly all of our everyday shopping.

Our Top 4 Tools For Evaluating Products And Food

You don't have to memorize a list of harmful ingredients (unless you want to!). Say goodbye to spending hours googling to decipher labels in the store. Below, we list five trusted resources that can help you evaluate products, from cleaning supplies to cosmetics to laundry detergent to food items. These resources make it easy to determine which are safe and clean quickly.

Resources We Recommend:

• Environmental Working Group: Use this resource to evaluate beauty and cleaning products.
• EWG's Clean 15 and Dirty Dozen List: Use this resource to assess pesticides in food.
• Yuka: Use this resource to evaluate food and beauty items.
• Made Safe: Use this resource to evaluate restricted and toxic substances.
• An honorable mention goes to Think Dirty, which can be used to evaluate cosmetic and beauty products.

Environmental Working Group (EWG)

Quick facts:

• Mobile app: Yes
• Apple and Android: Yes
• Best for: Evaluating cosmetic, beauty, and cleaning products

The Environmental Working Group (EWG) is an American activist group specializing in research and advocacy on agricultural subsidies, toxic chemicals, drinking water pollutants, and corporate accountability. As a nonprofit organization, EWG offers many helpful resources for educating and evaluating cleaning, beauty, and food products.

While their website is packed with valuable resources, we highly recommend their mobile app called "EWG’s Healthy Living App." This app provides ratings for over 120,000 food and personal care products.

Here's how the app works: simply scan the product, review its rating, and make an informed choice. EWG lists potentially harmful ingredients and assigns them a rating from 0 to 10, with lower numbers indicating better safety. They also certify the cleanest products with their "EWG Verified" stamp of approval.

Scoring system:

• 0-2 score = low hazard (green)
• 3-6 score = moderate hazard (yellow)
• 7-10 score = high hazard (red)

EWG’s Clean 15 And Dirty Dozen List

The Dirty Dozen is a list of 12 fruits and vegetables most likely to have high levels of pesticide residue (best to buy organic), even after being washed or peeled. The Clean Fifteen lists the 15 fruits and vegetables least likely to have pesticide residue (save money and buy these non-organic). EWG compiles the list each year to help shoppers make better decisions.

These lists help inform you which produce and food items are best to buy organic or limit your intake. While the list remains essentially the same year after year, EWG conducts research each year and updates the list accordingly.

Download and view the list for the Clean 15 and the Dirty Dozen.

Made Safe

Quick facts:

• Mobile app: No
• Use for: Evaluating restricted and toxic substances

EWG, as mentioned earlier, does an excellent job of ranking products based on their level of toxicity. However, MADE SAFE is another alternative for evaluating products based on their ingredients. If you come across the MADE SAFE label, you can trust that the product's ingredients are safe. The MADE SAFE Banned/Restricted List includes over 6,500 substances prohibited or restricted in MADE SAFE Certified products.

Their Red List identifies the most harmful toxic substances that should be avoided. These substances are commonly found in consumer products and daily routines. It serves as an excellent guide for evaluating products for personal use. You can access the Red List here.

Yuka

Quick facts:

• Mobile app: Yes
• Apple and Android: Yes
• Best for: Evaluating food and beauty items

Yuka deciphers product labels and analyzes the health impact of food products and cosmetics. We prefer using EWG to scan beauty, skincare, and cleaning products, while Yuka is our choice for evaluating food items. Their database contains over 3 million food products, 2 million cosmetic products, and 1,200 new products are added daily.

Yuka evaluates food and products on a rating scale from 0 to 100, with 100 being the best and highest score. Yuka provides a detailed data sheet for each product to explain how it was evaluated for food items. They also offer independent recommendations for similar items that are better for your health if a product ranks poorly.

Honorable Mention: Think Dirty

Quick facts:

• Mobile app: Yes
• Apple and Android: Yes
• Best for: Evaluating cosmetic and beauty products

Think Dirty is considered an alternative to EWG and Yuka when evaluating the toxic ingredients in personal care and cosmetic products. Although EWG and Yuka are held to higher standards, Think Dirty deserves an honorable mention.

Think Dirty functions in a similar way to EWG and Yuka. Scanning your products provides an overview of the ingredients and offers cleaner alternatives. The site lists over 2.3 million products from more than 4,000 brands.

Get Started Today

We hope this makes your transition to a non-toxic lifestyle easier. If there are any resources we missed or you have any questions, concerns, or suggestions, please do not hesitate to message us. Good luck on your non-toxic journey!